The New Sage Era

On Wednesday, Sage hosted its Capital Markets Day  (CMD) in London, the first where Steve Hare & the new Management Team presented. CMDs give companies like Sage the opportunity to speak directly with investors and analysts setting out a vision for the future.

A lot has happened at Sage since I joined eight months ago. In May, we announced the launch of Sage Life and Sage Impact, two products that will fundamentally change the way people think about business and accountants. This was followed soon after by our plans for the Sage Foundation and a ground-breaking approach to corporate philanthropy, setting the benchmark around the world.

While these were not the only changes we have undergone, they were significant and involved a lot of hard work, by a lot of very talented people. But, without wanting to undermine what has been achieved in the last few months, it was just the start of a new journey.  

The leadership team at Sage has a strong vision of where the company is heading and at CMD, we made a very clear statement of intent: we will be number one. We want to be the global market leader when it comes to enabling and championing Small and Medium Businesses. And we want to do it the right way, by trust with ‘customers for life’ and putting them at the heart of everything we do.

Sage is building on firm foundations. More than half of companies in the UK pay their employees using Sage and in Spain 56% of companies pay their taxes through our technology. We are already the market leader in the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Canada and South Africa.

But we can’t congratulate ourselves on our successes. We need to raise our ambitions and take advantage of the opportunities out there. In North America, 500,000 new startups were created last month. And, in the markets where we have an established presence, around half of the businesses that are not Sage customers are still running their operations on spreadsheets.

Everything we do must start and finish with ‘customers for life’. That means championing their causes. It means supporting small and medium business through our smart technology and the expertise of our people. It means offering choice rather, never forcing migration to a product but being there when a customer wants to look at new options.

We know that talk is cheap and that flawless and awesome execution, rather than words, will determine whether we succeed or fail. But the pace of change we have established is there for all to see. From conception to launch, the Sage Foundation took just 60 days. Sage Impact was developed in just 51 days, while its support network took 37 days to build.  This is the new pace that Sage is working to.  Velocity and the Speed of Now.       

Some commentators wrote that we are awakening a sleeping giant at Sage .Our aspirations for Small & Medium Business knows no bounds. Across the world we need to be feared by our competitors, loved and trusted by our customers and colleagues, and respected by our investors. But above all else, we need to be the champion that hardworking small and medium businesses deserve. So here’s to the risk takers, the hard workers, the go getters, the Small & Medium Businesses.